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LIGHT THROWN BY THE JESUITS UPON HITHERTO 

OBSCURE POINTS OF EARLY MARYLAND 

HISTORY. 

Read before Department of American History, Minnesota 
Historical Society. 

BY KEY. EDWARD D. NEILL. 

The "Records of the English Province of the Society of 
Jesus" with accompanying documents have been published 
in London, under the careful supervision of Henry Foley, 
one of their Order. 

While the six large volumes of this work pertain largely 
to the disturbed period in England, from the days of Queey 
Elizabeth to the accession of William and Mary, yet there 
are dispersed through the- many pages, facts of value to the 
student of American history. 

More than one hundred and fifty years ago, Oldmixon and 
other chroniclers began to write in a careless way of the 
Province of Maryland, and because Cecil Calvert, the Second 
Lord Baltimore, its Proprietor, was an adherent of the Church 
of Rome, an impression went abroad that a number of gen- 
tlemen, chiefly Roman Catholics and their servants, sought 
the shores of the Potomac in order to worship God in peace. 
Soon a mythical statement was formulated, that the Charter 
of Maryland was a charter of religious liberty, and that the 
first act for toleration in religion was passed A. D. 1649, by 
a Maryland Legislature. 

After the independence of the United States of America 
was recognized, the early historians of the Republic had not 
access to original documents, and were obliged to depend 
upon the loose statements found in geographical gazetteers, 
and in articles published in the "London" and " Gentleman's 
Magazine." 

Even Mr. Bancroft, our distinguished living historian, in 



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The Jesuits and the Early History of 31aryland. 

the first editions of his valuable work, was misled, and wrote 
that " religious liberty obtained a home, its only home in 
the wide world, at the humble village which bore the name 
of Saint Mary." The last edition of his History of the 
United States, however, shows a more intimate acquaintance 
with the early records, and his words are more like words of 
truth and soberness. The writers of our school histories, 
however, continue to retain the stereotyped formula, and 
even Scharf, in the latest and largest if not the best " History 1 
of Maryland," writes : "The evidence leads to the conclusion 
that the Colony, though containing many non-catholics, was a 
Roman Catholic settlement originally, and so continued until 
1649, when the great Toleration Act was published." In a 
little book published by Munsell, of Albany, during the 
centennial year of the Rei:)ublic, called the " Founders of 
Maryland," it was clearly shown that Thomas Cornwallis, 
called by Bozman " the guardian genius of the Colony," and 
other master minds of the infant settlement were Protestants, 
not Roman Catholics, and there are Parliamentary documents 
in which Cornwallis declares that he sympathized with 
Richard Ingle, the commander of the first Parliament ship 
^vhich appeared in Maryland waters, although, subsequently, 
he disagreed with this London captain. 

Statements, diflfering from those taught in our school days, 
have been hitherto received with distrust, and the originators 
thereof have been charged with iliiberality, Puritanism, or 
hatred of Roman Catiiolics. Happil}^, the vexed questions 
in connection with the earliest chapter of Maryland History 
have been settled by the publication, in the " Records" to 
which we have referred, of two papers, from the collection of 
Jesuit Manuscripts at Stonyhurst. 

The firsti, supposed by the learned editor to have been 
written by the Jesuit Father, Andrew White, who landed 
A. D. 1634, with the first immigrants at the Indian village on 
a tributary of the Potomac, and in 1645 was captured by Cap- 
tain Ingle, under a commission from Parliament, and taken 
to London, contains the following statements which will 
satisfy the fair-minded, that in the first days of the Maryland 



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The Jesuits and the Early History of Maryland. 

Province, religious liberty was not enjoyed. The language 
is most explicit. It is : " In a country like this, newly 
planted and depending upon England for its subsistence, 
where there is not, nor can be, until England is re-united to 
the Church, any ecclesiastical district established by the laws 
of the Prince, or granted by the Prince, nor permanent Synod 
held, nor spiritual courts erected, nor the canon law accepted, 
nor ordinary or other ecclesiastical persons admitted, as such, 
^nor the Catholic Yeligion 'publicly allowed. And whereas three 
parts of the people or [,off^^ four, at least, are heretics, I desire to 
be resolved." 

Here is a positive statement as to the overwhelming pre- 
ponderance of the Protestant element among the first settlers, 
and also that the adherents of the Church of Rome were not 
allowed places of public worship, and contradicts the state- 
ment in the last edition of Bancroft, that " toleration grew 
up in the Province silently, as a custom of the land." 

The other documents, written in 1642, by the Provincial 
of the Society of Jesus in England to the Propaganda at 
Rome, is strongly corroborative, and proves that the early 
colonists were troubled by religious dissensions. He writes 
of the people that the "greater part were heretics," that the 
country was "esteemed to be a New England," and that 
"■greater dangers threaten our Fathers, in a foreign, than in 
their native land of England," and that they cannot expect 
" sustenance from heretics hostile to the faith, nor from the 
Catholics who are for the most part poor, nor from the 
savages who live after the manner of wild beasts." 

He also adds: "For since the said Baron [Baltimore] was 
unable to govern Maryland in person, he appointed his sub- 
stitute, Mr. Leugar, his Secretary, who was formerly a min- 
ister and preacher, and being converted to the faith, retains 
much of the leaven of Protestantism, for he still maintains 
those dogmas, so justly offensive to Catholic ears, that no 
external jurisdiction was given by God to the Supreme Pon- 
tiif, but merely an internal one, in foro conscientire, etc." 

Then follows the direct statement that the first General 
Assembly, held under the Secretary, was '■'■composed with few 



The Jesuits and the Early History of Maryland. 

exceptions of heretics, and presided over by himself, in the 
name of the Lord Baltimore, to pass the following laws re- 
pugnant to the Catholic faith and ecclesiastical immunities : 
that no virgin can inherit, unless she marries before twenty- 
nine years of age; that no ecclesiastic shall be summoned in 
any cause, civil or criminal, before other than a secular judge; 
that no ecclesiastic shall enjoy any privilege, except such as 
he is able to show ex Scriptura ; nor to gain any thing for 
the Church, except by the gift of the Prince ; nor to except 
any site for a church or cemetery; nor any foundation from 
a convert Indian King; nor shall any one depart from the 
Province, even to preach the Gospel to Infidels, by the 
authority of the See Apostolic, without a licence from the lay 
magistrate." 

The firmness of the Jesuits, the letter continues, "greatly 
enraged" the Secretary, and he " began to turn his attention 
to the expulsion of the Fathers." 

It remains to be seen whether the compilers of school 
histories will conform to the facts above stated, or continue 
to repeat the old story, of Maryland being a Roman Catholic 
Colony, and the first home of religious liberty upon the con- 
tinent of North America. 

The "Mr. Leugar" spoken of in the letter to the Propa- 
ganda was John Lewger, a native of London, and a fellow- 
student of Cecil Calvert in Trinity College, Oxford, which 
he entered in 1616, and six years later received the degree 
of Master of Arts. Turning his attention to Theology, he 
received the degree of Bachelor Of Divinity at the same time 
as the celebrated Phil. Nye, a member subsequently of the 
Westminster Assembly of Divines. In 1632 he was Rector 
of a parish in Essex, but by the influence of Chillingworth, 
a god-son of Archbishop Laud, became an adherent of the 
Church of Rome. In a little while, however, Chillingworth 
repented of his position, and came back to the Church in 
which he was educated, and was anxious that Lewger should 
also retrace his steps. He published a letter called "Reasons 
against Popery, in a letter from Mv. William ChillingAvorth, 
to his friend Mr. Lewger, persuading him to return to his 



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The Jesuits and the Early History of Maryland. 

mother, the Church of England, from the corrupt Church of 
Rome." The elibrt failed, and Levvger's classmate, now the 
second Lord Baltimore, in April, 1637, appointed him Secre- 
tary of Maryland. He arrived in the Province, the next 
November, with his wife and son John, nine years of age. 
His duties were varied and important. In addition to those 
as Secretary, he was Receiver of Rents, Privy Councillor, 
Attorney General, and Judge in cases testamentary and 
matrimonial. During his residence in Maryland his wife 
had two daughters. Cicely and Elizabeth. In a few years his 
wife died, and he then went back to England, and became a 
priest of the Roman Catholic Church, and lived with his 
constant friend Lord Baltimore. 

If we would understand the early history of Maryland we 
must remember that Lord Baltimore has left on record a 
letter to the Earl of Strafford in which he states that the 
object of his colony was to promote his worldly interests. 
Cecil Calvert inherited but little from his father George, the 
Proprietor of Avalon, in New Foundland. When Charles the 
First, in February, 1638, ordered the nobility of Yorkshire 
and other of the northern counties to retire to their estates, 
Baltimore w^rites a letter to the Secretary of State, in which 
he expresses his willingness to sacrifice his life and his fortune 
for his Majesty, but he asks a dispensation in his favor: 
"Because," says he, "my wife has not, I protest to you, 
stirred out of her chamber these three months last past 
through illness, and 1 have little hope that she can be able 
to make any such journey as unto Yorkshire, where my house 
is, by the 1st of next month. Nor, indeed, am I any way 
persuaded to live there with my family, where I never resided 
in my life, nor seen so much as my land there in ten years^ 
it all being rented out together with my house to tenants." 

Wardour Castle, the seat of the Eatl Arundel, where Cecil, 
Lord Baltimore, resided with his father-in-law, was rich with 
ancestral associations, but the old Earl was very poor in this 
world's goods. When fourscore years of age, under date of 
February 17,1638-39, he writes to the King: "Moneys I 
have none, no, not to pay the interest of the debts. My plate 



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h-e Jesuits and the Early History of Maryland. 

is placed at pawn. My son, Baltimore, is brought so low with 
his setting forward the plantation of Maryland, and with 
the claims and oppositions which he has met with, as that I 
do not see how he could subsist, if I did not give him diet 
for himself, wife, children." 

When the Jesuits began to convert and obtain grants of 
land from Indian chiefs on the Potomac, in the name of their 
agents, and to claim that they were not obliged to conform 
to the regulations of the land office of the Province, it is 
easy to see why Baltimore's Secretary desired their expul- 
sion, and why everything was not altogether loTely. 

APPENDIX. 

Fot the convenience of historical stlidents, there is appended 
the full text of the documents alluded to in the above article, 
extracted from vol. 3d, pp. 362-367, " Records of the English 
Province of the Society of Jesus," by lleiiry Foley, S. J. 
Loudon : Burns & Oates, 1878. 

The Editor prefaces the first with these remarks: — 

" In volume IV., Stonyhurst MSS., Anglta, n. 108 b, is a paper headed 
'Cases' containing a list of twenty propositions of canon law for the advice 
of Propaganda, which were probably written by Father White, and sent 
through the Provincial Father Blount. 

" These propositions arose out of the oppressive conduct of the Secretary 
of Lord Baltimore, in whose charge he had left the infant colony during his 
temporary absence.' They are referred to in the letter of the Reverend Father 
Provincial, in Rome, which commences thus" — 

"In a country like this, newly planted, and depending wholly upon Eng- 
land for its subsistence, where tliere is not (nor can be until P^ngland is re- 
united to the Church) any ecclesiastical discipline established by laws of the 
province, or granted by the Prince, nor provincial synod held, nor spiritual 
courts created, nor the canon laws accepted, nor ordinary, or other ecclesi- 
astical persons admitted (as such), nor the Catholic religion publicly allowed. 
And whereas three parts of the people or four, at least, are heretics, I desire 
to be resolved." 

" Then follow various questions to be solved. In the same volume of MSS., 
n. 108 H, is the form of a special agreement to be entered into between the 
Father Provincial of the English Province and the Lord Cecil Baltimore, 
his heirs and successors. This first recites that 'the King of England had 
granted the province of Maryland, with royal jurisdiction therein to the said 



' Father Foley shows a singular ignorance of history; Cecil, Lord Balti- 
more, was never a resident of Maryland. — E. D. N. 



7 he Jesuits and the Early History of 3Ia7yland. 

Lord Baltimore, by force whereof no English subject, even a colonist of 
Maryland was capable of accepting, buying, &c., any land, unless by licence 
of the said Baron or his heirs; and since the said Baron had incurred and 
was still incurring great expenses, and daily underwent many troubles and 
dangers, both of person and property, chiefly on account of propagating 
Christianity in those parts, without having as yet received any fruit or tem- 
poral gain, who, however had he failed hi his protection of the colony, it 
never could (humanly speaking) have lasted so long,' &c., it then proceeds in 
several clauses to make stipulations as to the purchase, &i:., of land in the 
colony: 'And since it is sufficiently clear that Maryland depends upon Eng- 
land, that it could not support itself unless they freciueutly sent over supplies 
of necessaries ; and since it is not the less evident that, as affairs now are, 
those privileges, &c., usually granted to ecclesiastics of the Roman Catholic 
Church, by Catholic Princes in their own countries, could not possibly be 
granted here without grave offence to the King and State of England (which 
offence may be called a hazard both to the Baron and especially to the 
whole colony). Therefore,' &c. The agreement goes on to bind the mem- 
bers of the Society in Maryland not to demand or require any such privileges 
and exemptions, excepting only those relating to corporal punishments, unless 
by chance the offence should be a capital one in which degradation would 
attach ; and then provides as to the licence of the Governor for sending out 
members of the Society to Maryland, and for their removal, &c. 

" The labors of the Jesuit missionaries having been greatly blessed in 
the conversion both of Protestants and native Indians, as we shall see from 
the Annual Letters of the Province, the enemies of the Catholic faith were 
aroused,' and in the year 1642 a serious assault was made upon the privi- 
leges and immunities of the Catholic Churcli in the colony, by which means 
they sought to tie the hands of the missionaries. The Fathers resisted the 
attack as being fatal to the mission, and reported at once to the Vice-Pro- 
vincial at home (then Father Henry More), who immediately appealed to 
Propaganda, and wrote the following memorial to the Cardinal Prefect. A 
copy of it is preserved in MSS., Anglia, Vol. IV. n. 108 k." 

Memorial to Cardinal Prefect. 

"The Provincial of the Society of Jesus in England humbly represents to 
your Eminence, that in the month of June, 1632, the King of England 
granted to the noble Lord Baron Baltimore, a Catholic, in propriety, a 
certain Province on. the sea coast of North America, inhabited by infidels, 
which at this day is called the Land of Mary, or Maryland, after the reign- 
ing Queen of England. 

"The said Baron immediately treated with Father Richard Blount, at 
that time Provincial, at the same time writing to Father General, earnestly 
begging that he would select certain Fathers, as well for confirming the 
Catholics in the faith, and converting the heretics who were destined to 



' Father White says that these enemies were Lord Baltimore and his 
ajrents. — E. D. N. 



The Jesuits and the Early History of Maryland. 

colonize that country, as also for propagating the faith amongst the infidels 
and savages. The affair was surrounded with heavy and many difficulties, 
for in leading the colony to Maryland by far the greater part were heretics, 
the country Ttself, a meridie Virginice ah Aquilune, is esteemed likewise to 
be a New England, that is two provinces full of English Calvinists and 
Puritans ; so that no less, nay, perhaps greater dangers threaten our Fathers 
ill a foreign, than in their native land of England. Nor is the Baron himself 
able to find support for the Fathers, nor can they expect sustenance from 
heretics hostile to the faith, nor from the Catholics for the most part poor, 
nor from the savages who live after the manner of wild beasts. 

" The zeal of. the said Father Provincial conquered these and other diffi- 
culties, and at first two Fathers were sent out, as it were, to explore and 
ascertain if there might be any hope of the gain of souls, when the country 
should appear 'white to the harvest.' Some years ago a geographical de- 
scription of this country was presented to his Eminence, Cardinal liarberini, 
Protector, with a humble petition that he would deign to receive the Fathers 
sent out there under the patronage of his kind protection, equally with the 
rest in England, so that the matter might be transacted in such a way as to 
avoid giving offence to the State of P^ngland. 

''After this the Fathers indeed increased both in numbers and in courage, 
in sufferings of hunger and want, in frequent diseases which were fatal to some, 
and lastly through various dangers applied themselves with constancy to 
the salvation of souls, learnt the savage language which is formed of various 
dialects, composed a dictionary, a grammar, and a catechism for the use of 
the infidels ; and the Divine Goodness was pleased so to favor these attempts 
that, besides others, a certain chief, having many tributary kings under him, 
with his wife and family and some of his ministers, was brought to the faith, 
and unless hindered by professing Catholics, a great door was laid open to 
the Gospel. 

" Impediments indeed, and these severe ones, did arise, and from those 
from whom they were least due. For, since the said Baron was unable to 
govern Maryland in person, he appointed as his substitute a certain Mr. 
Leugar, his Secretary, who was formerly a minister and preacher, and being 
converted to the faith retained much of the leaven of Protestantism : for he 
still maintained those dogmas so justly offensive to Catholic ears— that no 
external jurisdiction was given by God to the Supreme Pontiff, but merely 
an internal one in foro conscientice ; that no immunity for goods or person 
was due to him or any other ecclesiastics, except such as lay princes and 
seculars chose to confer upon him or them ; that it would be a great offence, 
and one to be mulct by punishment to exercise any jurisdiction whatever, 
even of absolving from sin, without special licence from the Baron, from 
whom all lawful jurisdiction was derivable ; that a woman making a vow of 
virginity, and not marrying after the twenty-fifth year of her age, could not 
hold lands by heirship coming from her parents, but that they must be sold, 
and if the parties refused to do so, then by compulsory sale. That the 
General Assembly or Parliament possessed so great an authority over the 
property of all, that it could dispossess every one it chose of their all, eveu 
to the under-garment, for the use of the Republic; and other such like propo- 
sitions of the said Mr. Leugar are comprehended in twenty questions which 
are laid before this second Congregation by the hands of the Secretary. 

"Therefore the Secretary (Leugar) having summoned the Assembly in 
Maryland, composed with few exceptions of heretics and presided over by 
himself, in the name of the Lord Baltimore, attempted to pass the following 
laws repugnant to the Catholic faith and ecclesiastical immunities : That no 
virgin can inherit, unless she marries before twenty-nine years of age ; that 
no ecclesiastic shall be summoned in any cause civil or criminal before any 
other than a secular judge; that no ecclesiastic shall enjoy any privilege. 



The Jesuits and the Early History of Maryland. 

except such as he is able to show ex scriptura, nor to gain anything for 
the Church except by the gift of the prince, nor to accept any site for a 
church or cemetery, nor any foundation from a convert Indian Icing; nor 
ehall any one depart I'rom the province, even to preach tlie Gospel to the 
infidels by authority of the Sec Apostolic, without a licence from the lay 
magistrate ; nor shall any one exercise jurisdiction within the province, 
which is not derived from the said Baron, and such like. 

" Tlie Fathers of the Society warmly resisted this foul attempt, professing 
themselves ready to shed their blood in defence of the faith and the liberty 
of the Church. Which firmness greatly enraged the Secretary, who imme- 
diately reported to Baron Baltimore that his jurisdiction was interrupted by 
the Fathers, whose doctrine was inconsistent with the government of the 
province. Hence the said Baron, being offended, became alienated in his 
mind from the Fathers of the Society of Jesus, and at first ipso facto seized 
all their lands and let them to others, as though he was the lord and pro- 
prietor of them, although King Patuen had given them the same lands when 
he was a catechumen, upon the express condition for supporting priests, who 
had brought his subjects to the true knowledge, faith, and worship of God. 
The said Baron, with others favorable to his opinions, began to turn his 
attention to the expulsion of the Fathers, and the introducing others in their 
stead who would be more pliable to his Secretary. Therefore he procured 
last year to petition the Sacred Congregation of the Propagation of the 
Faith, in the name of the Catholics of Maryland, to grant to a Prefect 
and secular priests faculties for the same mission, making no mention in 
the meanwhile of the labors of the Fathers undertaken in that harvest, 
nor expressing the motives which induced him to substitute new mission- 
ary priests. And in order that he might have some new grounds to urge 
for calling away the Fathers of the Society from thence, he proposed cer- 
tain points similar to those laid before the Sacred Congregation, to be 
presented to the Provincial by the hands of the Secretary, that he might 
subscribe them in the name of himself and of the Fathers in Maryland. But 
the Sacred Congregation, being entirely ignorant of tliese matters, granted 
the petition; and in the month of August, 1641, faculties were expedited 
from the Sacred Congregation and were transmitted to Dom. Eossett, now 
Archbishop of Tarsus. 

" But since perhaps the other Prefect is not as yet appointed, or the 
faculties delivered, but are as yet, it is hoped, in the hands of Father 
Phillips, the confessor of the Queen of England, the said Provincial humbly 
begs of your Eminence, to deign to direct that the said faculties may be 
superseded, if the matter is yet entire, or if by chance the faculties are 
delivered, that the departure of new priests may be retarded for a sufficient 
space of time to allow the Holy See to decide upon what is best to be done 
for the good of souls. The Fathers do not refuse to make way for other 
laborers, but they humbly submit for consideration, whether it is expedient 
to remove those who first entered into that vineyard at their own expense, 
who for seven years have endured want and sufferings, who have lost four 
of their confreres, laboring faithfully unto death, who have defended sound 
doctrine and the liberty of the Church with odium and temporal loss to 
themselves, who are learned in the language of the savages, of which the 
priests to be substituted by the Baron Baltimore are entirely ignorant, and 
which priests either allow or defend that doctrine, from which it must needs 
be that contentions and scandals should arise, and the spark of faith be ex- 
tinguished which begins to be kindled in the breasts of the infidels. Never- 
theless, the Fathers profess themselves ready, with all submission, either to 
return to England from Maryland, or to remain there and to labor even to 
death, for the faith and dignity of the Holy See, as may seem fit to the 
prudence, the goodness, and charity of your Eminence." 




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